List of Super Bowl lead-out programs

The Super Bowl is the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL), and typically the highest-rated single U.S. television broadcast of any given year. In turn, the program aired immediately following coverage of the game in the U.S. is typically also one of the year's most watched television programs. Super Bowl lead-out programs set the mold for programs that have followed important television events, such as season finales of certain shows. This article is a list of programs that have aired immediately following the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl provides an extremely strong lead-in to the programming on the channel following the game, the effects of which can last for several hours. For instance, in discussing the ratings of a local TV station, Buffalo, New York television critic Alan Pergament noted on the coattails from Super Bowl XLVII, which aired on CBS: "A paid program that ran on Channel 4 at 2:30 in the morning had a 1.3 rating. That’s higher than some CW prime time shows get on WNLO-TV, Channel 4’s sister station."

The Super Bowl lead-out is typically aired across most U.S. markets simultaneously, and is usually one hour in length, although before the game adopted its standard kickoff time of just after 6:00 p.m. ET in the early 1990s, it was not uncommon for longer programs to be broadcast. When the game moved into a later time slot in 1983, the game and its associated post-game programming would be scheduled until 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time / 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time, allowing for only one hour of network programming until the late local news. Outside of the few blowout games through the game's history, these programs never have started anywhere near the mentioned time, due to the extended length of the pre-game, halftime, and post-game festivities. It is common for affiliates in the home markets of the competing teams to delay the lead-out show further, until after additional local post-game coverage. In addition, stations often use the large audience in order to introduce a re-imaging of the station's local newscasts and station's look, with many stations in the late 2000s and early 2010s using the game to launch their high definition news operations.

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